


Watch

by greyvvardenfell



Series: OC-tober 2020 [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Light BDSM, Mirror Sex, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:16:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27174392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/greyvvardenfell
Summary: Zevran has heard Reydis disparage herself one time too many, and sets out to show her how beautiful she is.
Relationships: Zevran Arainai/Brosca
Series: OC-tober 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974934
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Watch

“What are you doing to me, Zevvy?”

Zevran laughed, gently, deep in his throat, and adjusted Reydis’s blindfold again. “You will see soon enough, _mi amora_.”

Despite herself, Reydis felt a flush begin to build on her cheeks. The pure, perfect obedience of submitting to Zevran, with his wandering hands and silk-smooth murmurs, beckoned her closer to compliance than curiosity with each passing moment.

“Are you comfortable, my dear? Nothing too tight?”

The ropes binding her wrists in front of her barely chafed. She didn’t enjoy being tied up nearly as much as Zevran did, but knowing what to do with her hands — by being unable to do anything — still soothed her. She nodded.

“Mm, you look so sweet like this. So tantalizing, to watch your chest heave.”

The impulse to gripe at him, to complain about how long he was making her wait, fizzled out and died long before it reached her tongue. She settled on a small smile instead. 

“And as much as I enjoy it…” Zevran trailed off, the heat of his hands sliding over her shoulders as he pressed a kiss to the back of her neck. “I know it is only a taste of what the rest of our night will hold.”

Reydis leaned into him and sighed happily. Her mind had been far too busy of late, keeping her awake at night and questioning her every decision. Its silence now was more than welcome.

Zevran’s touch flowed down her back, squeezing gently, before settling on her hips to hold her still as he sank his teeth into the muscle connecting her neck and shoulder. He soothed the bite with quick kisses and closed the small gap that remained between them, groaning in appreciation of the way her flesh moved.

“I am going to remove your blindfold now,” Zevran said softly, lips close to her ear. “You… you are, of course, more than allowed to stop this at any time." 

Deep in the bottom of her mind, the concept of a question stirred. What could have prompted him to preface what he had planned with that reminder? Before she could grab hold of the thought, it fluttered away. She watched it go as if from afar.

As the blindfold fell into her lap, Reydis blinked, surprised by the brightness of the room. Usually, their nights together were dimly lit, if lit at all. But now the bedroom glowed, filled with so many candles that their flames blurred into one. And before her, propped at the foot of the bed, stood a large mirror bound in gold, reflecting both the fluttering lights and, on full display, herself.

Crouched behind her, Zevran dropped kisses along one solid arm. Reydis found him a much better picture than the sight of her body and focused on the way his tattoos seemed to dance in the firelight. His calloused brown hands stood out starkly on her pale skin as he skated his fingers down the wake of his kisses, jumping from one reddened love-mark to the next. He hummed in satisfaction when he reached her breasts and cupped them, adoring their weight.

“I want to see you, _amora_ ,” he murmured. “And I want you to see yourself. How beautiful you look when I touch you, kiss you, make love to you.”

Reydis swallowed, the part of her mind not yet lulled to silence screaming at her to contradict him. 

He continued, thumbing her nipples as he rocked her in a gentle circle. “I have wanted to see you from the very moment you caught my eye, so much so that I cursed the darkness for hiding you. But all the places we were able to bed down together seemed to conspire against me… I held on to the memory of you lit by the flames in Andraste’s temple for far longer than I care to say. Ha, I had thought myself the master of my own body then, but as I stripped down as well, it threatened to betray me.” He chuckled. “What would you have thought of that, my dear, to see me desire you so obviously?”

Reydis wished she could say that she would have sunk to her knees, in front of Andraste herself and everyone else, and sucked him off right there. But too little time had passed for her to forget the shame, the impulse to flee from such mortification nearly overwhelming. She couldn’t lie to herself, or to him: had he revealed such a response, she was the last person she would’ve thought to be the cause. 

Zevran must not have expected an answer. He slid down from her breasts, muffling his pleasure as he cradled her heavy belly. With a parting kiss to the end of her collarbone, he rested his chin on her shoulder.

As though the strength of his concentration guided her, Reydis met his eyes in the mirror. He smiled as he admired the contrast of their skin tones with his arms wrapped around her. “I hardly know where to begin, with you like this,” he said.

 _Begin with what,_ she wondered absently. Something big, surely, to honey her up with such exaggerated claims of her appeal. She blinked at him in their shared reflection, unable to keep the question from her gaze.

Zevran laughed once more and kissed the side of her head, behind her ear. “You wish me to look into your eyes instead, hm? Ah, but it is more important for you to watch. Watch us and listen to Zevran, yes? I will not lie to you, _amora_ , like you lie to yourself.”

That stirred her, allowing her tongue to form words once more. “I don’t—”

“You do. I have seen the disgust on your face when you look at yourself and it pains me. I know why you turn down the lights when we make love, why you only allow us to bathe together at night when I cannot appreciate you as you deserve. I want no more of that.”

Stunned, Reydis didn’t protest again. Zevran sighed into her neck and pulled her closer. "You are so cruel to the body you inhabit, my sweet. You will let me show you how to be kind to it instead.” He shifted his attention back to her arms and nuzzled into the top of her shoulder, mouthing a kiss onto the bold blue lines of one of her many Carta tattoos. “You will let me describe you from a perspective not tainted by years of thinking yourself unworthy.”

A bloom of fear started in the pit of her stomach and flowed up her spine, poisoning the emptiness she had been about to sink into. Couldn’t he tell that it was for his own good she hid herself? She opened her mouth to say so, but Zevran wrapped his hand around her jaw and held it shut.

“And I think, perhaps, we should try this without your commentary, as well. If you need me to stop, you may say so, but that is all I will hear out of you. Simply listen.” He nipped her earlobe, just beneath the earring he had given her. “Listen and watch.”

If there was anywhere in Thedas the Hero of Ferelden could feel safe, it was here, in her room deep in Denerim’s royal palace, held so tightly in her lover’s embrace that she could feel his ribs move with the breaths he drew. 

A season had passed since the Archdemon fell to her blade. For at least a month of that, she’d been recovering from the toll the battle had taken, her hands scalded by the molten metal her sword became in the Archdemon’s dying scream, her skin marked by darkspawn weapons that made the wounds ooze foulness as soon as they appeared, her hair cut short, even shorter than before, to remove the ends singed by the dragon’s foul breath. She could barely stand the scent of elfroot anymore, or the pitying clucks of the healers who interrupted her sleep to check on her. Their visits had, mercifully, come less and less often as she regained her strength, and now she felt herself again.

As much herself as she could stand, anyway, with new scars and burns atop the same blemished skin she’d always carried around. 

Zevran had been with her the whole time, beside her from the moment she awoke from the unconsciousness her soul had sought after intertwining, however briefly, with the Archdemon’s. He had read to her, changed her bandages, tended to her every need as she convalesced. His kisses buoyed her spirits more than any healer’s word or empty Chantry prayer for her good health intoned by supplicants outside her door. The rush of people who demanded to see their savior became so great after word of her survival spread that Anora declared the palace closed to visitors until Reydis requested it to reopen. And she hadn’t yet, basking in the quiet and solace of having Zevran all to herself for the first time since they met.

They’d taken full advantage of that privacy, once she recovered enough to do so. 

Zevran folded over her, allowing his hands to wander across her chest and upper arms again. His gentle fingertips traced her freshly healed wounds, his lips gracing her sensitive collarbone with a kiss for each one he found. Slowly, he brought her back into the moment, narrowing her world until only he existed and her mind was too focused on where he might linger next to pester her with its frantic complaints. 

As she floated, he began to speak, too softly for her to hear until he chuckled to himself and sighed in appreciation.

“You know, I think there is no better joy in this life than sinking into the embrace of a body like yours,” Zevran said. “You feel like home, _amora_ , when you wrap your arms around me.”

He glided his lips down her skin, making use of his greater height to eclipse her as he followed the lines of muscle beneath her skin to her bound hands. His warm breath, shaped by his smile, broke in bursts against her wrists.

“We could be anywhere and I would welcome your touch. These hands of yours… you have killed with them, I know, but sometimes I cannot imagine beyond the feeling of your fingers in my hair, or your nails in my back.” 

The growl in his voice nearly convinced the whimper resting in Reydis’s throat to force its way out. She let her mouth fall open and her eyelids fall shut, leaned into him— 

“Ah, ah.” Zevran’s gentle reprimand stung like a slap. He moved away, the rush of air that replaced him too cool, too empty. “Not yet. What did I ask of you?”

Reydis wasn’t sure she remembered how to answer questions like that, but her tongue responded anyway. “L-listen,” she gasped.

“And?”

“Watch?”

“Very good.” His praise was morning sunlight, chasing the darkness inside her away. “But you cannot watch if your eyes are closed, can you?”

“No.”

“No,” he agreed easily. “Let’s see what we can see, then, hm?”

Zevran guided her chin towards her reflection again. Even the bubbling warmth ignited by his words fought against taking in the sight of her body, pale and fat and imperfect. She sought the molten gold of his gaze as a last bastion of protection from facing what she saw.

But he wasn’t looking at her. Or rather, he was: at all the wrong parts. Reydis watched in horror as he scanned her legs, folded, with the flesh of her thighs broadened by the press of her calves beneath them. His scrutiny then climbed one arm to take in her wide, rounded shoulders and thick neck, lingering on her uneven breasts before descending again.

She tried to let him look. She knew she was supposed to, that he wanted her to want him to do this. But the weight of self-consciousness barely held at bay by his soft attention and soothing words would no longer be stopped. She lunged for the peace she might have been able to drop into, had the room been dark, but the last scraps of it flickered and went out like candles in a gust of wind. Zevran’s face fractured into tears as she gave in to her shame.

It hadn’t been far out of reach. Her sobs shook her open, dredging up pain and heartache Reydis thought she’d left behind long ago. Her mother’s voice, scalding hot, berated her for growing too fat for yet another shirt the family couldn’t afford. The other casteless children ran down a narrow Dust Town alleyway, taunting her, asking if she could even fit to follow. One of her mother’s friends took her aside, though still within earshot of the rest, to say that her face would be prettier without the acne scars. Jarvia’s dismissive judgement landed heavily on her: _I’m sure you won’t have any trouble scaring men off like **that**_. 

Every word fed a teardrop, then another, and another. She had no choice but to let them fall, staining her round cheeks red. Her heart quaked as though it wanted to be free of her entirely; perhaps that’s what hurt so much, the panicked thrashing of a wounded animal knowing that its end was near, stalking inexorably closer, and yet unable to flee. 

Surely, Zevran would leave.

This was what she’d feared, why she’d protected him for so long. 

If he hadn’t thought her ugly before, he would now; she wept like a child, unable to wipe her nose or her eyes or hide her face from him with her hands bound. 

And then the rope loosened and she could.

And then the horrible sight disappeared as she did. 

“ _Amora_ …”

Reydis crumbled, covering herself. She rocked in her panic, stifling her primal sobs in the flesh of her forearm. The shallow divots left by the rope around her wrists caught stray tears as they flowed over her skin.

She barely noticed the warmth of his body positioning itself behind her. Even when his gentle hands ushered her into his embrace, even when he pulled her arm free of the abuse of her teeth, even when he hugged her so close that her heart had no choice but to calm itself, settling under the expertise of another that had survived pain like this already.

“Oh, Reydis,” Zevran said quietly. He resumed the rocking she had started, soothing her as she clutched him with desperate strength: like he’d ever dream of letting her go. Words would elude her for a while, he judged, but he could still use his own.

“Oh, Reydis,” he repeated. “If I could, I would slit the throats of everyone who did not see the beauty in you, and made you dread the sight of it yourself. An unforgivable offense, in my opinion.” He nuzzled into her hair and sighed.

Reydis only cried harder, curled as tightly into his lap as she could be. Zevran comforted her with kisses, with gentle murmurs, with the same Antivan lullabies that had called her back from the brink of a breakdown in the broodmother’s lair. He hadn’t seen her cry like this since then — even their last night in Redcliffe before the forced march to Denerim, as they wept and planned against the odds for a future together, had been easier: she’d been able to speak through her pain then. Whatever she felt now came from somewhere else, rooted in the depths of her mind beyond another’s aid. But he wouldn’t leave her to suffer through it alone, as she had been left before. He knew the dangers of that all too well.

Zevran couldn’t say how long he held her. One of the many candles spread atop the wardrobe guttered out, followed by one on the windowsill and another on the mantle. Slowly, she cried herself to silence in his arms, and when she finally lifted her face from the safety of his chest, he smiled.

“ _Sí, amora?_ ”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice still thick with tears. 

“For what, my dear?”

Reydis swallowed hard. “Everything.”

“Now, now. That is no answer.”

The lightheartedness behind his words only made her look away. “This was supposed to be fun for you, right?”

“Mm?”

She struggled to sit up, out of his embrace. “I’m under the impression that things like this are supposed to be fun. I usually have fun, when we— when you— when you tell me what to do.” 

Zevran cocked his head and shifted closer to her, resting his hands on her broad bare back and rubbing slow circles with his thumbs. “I want only what is best for you. When you submit to me, you are putting yourself in my care, yes?”

“I guess.”

“And were I to submit to you, I would be doing the same.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

With fire in her voice again, Zevran kissed the top of her spine and asked her with a press of his hand to turn around and face him. She complied only reluctantly. “I cannot apologize for pushing you to this. If you do not see what I see, I must show you again and again until you can.”

New tears welled in her eyes, and she lifted a hand to scrub them away. He caught her wrist and intertwined their fingers instead. “Please, let them come. They are as much a part of you as everything else I love. There is no shame in weeping, no more than there is shame in the shape of your body.”

She laughed shakily, but through more pain than amusement. “So there is shame.”

“Reydis, please!”

She startled. Zevran had never raised his voice at her before. 

“Please, _amora_. Please do not speak to yourself like that. I cannot bear it.”

“I didn’t—”

“I know.” Zevran clasped her hands in his. “I know you do not wish for your words to hurt anyone else. But you should not be hurt by them, either. I asked for you to listen to me, and to watch me, but it was for you. I thought… If you could see yourself through my eyes, my dear, I have no doubt such vitriol would vanish like morning fog.”

His hair brushed her forearms as he leaned down to kiss her curled fingers. Reydis swallowed around a fresh catch in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“I know that too.”

Zevran gathered her close once more, close enough to keep her from shattering into pieces. Several more candles burned down their wicks and flickered out before she sighed and shifted, pressing a kiss of her own to the jut of his wrist.

“Zevvy, I… Thank you. Just, thank you. I— This— I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you, or make you think that I—”

“Oh, my sweet. You did not hurt me and I think no less of you than I ever have.”

“I… yeah. I think I knew that.”

He smiled. “I hope you knew that, but if you did not, I would be more than pleased to say it again.”

“You don’t have to. I… I want to be strong. For you. I never would’ve gotten this far without you and I just want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“My dear.” Zevran paused to tilt Reydis’s chin up, looking deep into her eyes. Though her eyelids fluttered and she swallowed hard, she did not look away. “Is it so strange to imagine that I wish the same for you?”

“No. I guess not.”

“You _guess_ not?”

She laughed, small and quiet in the back of her throat. “Okay, it isn’t strange.”

“Reydis, I love you.”

He rarely spoke the words, though he stated his love in so many other ways it hardly mattered. But something about the tremor in his voice flew straight to Reydis’s heart and lodged there, warming her to the core.

“I love you. Truly, I want nothing more than to show you to yourself the way you have shown yourself to me.” Zevran traced the blocks of her brand, a delicate touch as familiar to her now as sunlight. “How can I help you _see_ , hm?”

Reydis inhaled sharply. She knew the answer, both what she wanted to say and what he wanted to hear: she needed to look past the veil of self-hatred she’d cultivated for so long. It was just that simple and just that difficult. 

But if there was anywhere in Thedas the Hero of Ferelden could feel safe, it was here. In her room deep in Denerim’s royal palace. Held so tightly in her lover’s embrace that she could feel his ribs move with the breaths he drew.

“Can we try again?” she asked softly. 

Zevran’s face lit up, his happiness warming the room as surely as the candles surrounding them. “Of course we can.”

He rose to his knees and turned to face the mirror again, guiding Reydis with him and kissing her throat as she, too, knelt tall and stared into the gold-bound glass with determination in the furrow of her brow. She watched him resume his path down her body, tracing stretch marks and sword-wounds. She tilted her head to allow him better access to the fat beneath her chin as he nuzzled her. She fought against the tension that sprang to her shoulders when he swept his hand across her stomach, pausing to squeeze gently and run his fingers along the rolls on her sides. 

Zevran’s adoration spilled from him in kisses and groans, sharpening into whispered Antivan as he worked himself, and her, into the moment again. He was panting hard before he switched back to Common with a breathless laugh.

“Oh, how could you see yourself and not realize how captivating you are? Plush and soft as velvet, and twice as beautiful. You blush like the petals of a rose, so stunning that the rose itself fades in comparison.”

“Is all this from the same place you got that sex poetry?” she asked, rolling her head onto his shoulder.

“Aha, but I recite your poetry now. The greatest poets would kill for a chance to be inspired by you.” Zevran kissed her again and shifted his touch to her hips, digging his fingertips into her flesh to pull her to him and keep her there. “But they would first have to get through me.”

Reydis giggled. The sight of him, absorbed so fully in his attention to her, made her body seem almost seductive, the way it moved with him and molded to his hands. The coil of disgust in her stomach shrank smaller and smaller in the flood of his appreciation.

“Do you want me to prove it, _amora_?” Zevran’s voice pitched lower, husky and dark with arousal. “Do you want to see what you do to me?”

As his dominance reemerged, her heart thrilled. The temptation of obedience beckoned. “Yes,” she murmured.

“Tell me.”

“I want to see you.”

“You want to see me what?”

“I want to see what I do to you.”

Zevran smiled, eyes hooded, and dragged one hand from her hip to her jaw, to direct her gaze back to his in the mirror. He took her earlobe into his mouth for a quick bite, then trailed kisses onto her cheek and down to her mouth, stealing what little breath she had managed to regain.

“And why can you affect me so much?” he asked against her lips.

“B-because…”

“Hm?”

“Because I’m…”

“Say it, _amora_.”

Behind the bite of fresh tears, Reydis sobbed again and squeezed her eyes shut. But they did not stay shut for long. “Because I’m beautiful.”

Zevran surged forward to kiss her again, rubbing against the flesh of her ass with a sharp jerk of his hips. “ _Yes_ ,” he hissed when they parted, heat and passion and relief and love rushing out together on the end of the word. “Say it again.”

If nothing else, the flush on her cheeks made her blue eyes all the more obvious. “I’m beautiful.”

He wrapped himself around her, pressed his nose to the join of her neck and shoulder, and hugged her tight. “And again,” he said.

“I’m beautiful. I’m beautiful! I’m—”

By the time she stopped, she spoke strongly, her pain having retreated against the force of the words. Zevran slumped away with a parting kiss to her cheek and a gentle chuckle, sitting back on his heels to massage her shoulders.

“I think,” he said softly, “That you have more than earned your orgasms tonight, _amora_. You are so brave, so irresistible… I would like very much to see you lose yourself in pleasure.”

Reydis smiled and leaned into the push and recede of his hands over the knots in her neck that her tension had left behind. “I think I’d like to see that, too.”


End file.
